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    A Farewell to Maya Moore, a Team Player Who Is Also One of a Kind

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    Moore, who has officially retired from the W.N.B.A., will be remembered for her brilliance on the court and her fight for justice away from it.One of my clearest memories of Maya Moore has nothing to do with basketball, and nothing to do with her fight for justice.It is a memory of watching her sing four years ago, in a choir at Passion City Church in Atlanta.I do not recall the song, but I remember the impression she gave as she and the choir belted out a spiritual. Moore is perfectly comfortable settling in and finding a rhythm with the group. And she can also stand out and make a song her own.That mix — patiently one with the team and yet powerfully individual — is a hallmark of a career that will undoubtedly end with enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.It is the quality that animated her against-the-odds quest to free Jonathan Irons, the wrongfully convicted Missouri inmate serving 50 years for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon until Moore used her star power in a successful bid to gain his release. Then she married Irons, surprising even close chroniclers such as myself.She carries those traits of communal leadership and independence into the next phase of her life. During a publicity tour for “Love and Justice: A Story of Triumph on Two Different Courts,” a book she co-wrote with Irons, Moore announced Monday that she would never play high-level basketball again. At 33, a midcareer age for most players of her caliber, she is officially retiring. Her final game was a loss to the Los Angeles Sparks in the 2018 W.N.B.A. playoffs.Jonathan Irons, right, was wrongfully convicted and was serving 50 years for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon until Moore used her star power in a successful bid to gain his freedom.Bee Trofort for The New York TimesMoore, as always, took the script and made it her own.“When I was playing, I always tried to bring energy, always tried to bring light and joy and intensity to what I was doing,” she said after her announcement. “I hope people saw me as someone who gave all she had.” She continued, noting another hope: that fans could also tell she had a healthy perspective about basketball and “where people fit into this journey of life.”What makes Moore stand out is the example she set away from basketball. By speaking up for justice before it was fashionable for athletes to do so, quitting the game to free Irons and continuing to fight for change in the judicial and prison systems, she became a beacon for others to follow.Her retirement does not shock. It’s not as if there have been social media posts in recent years showing her sweating through workouts at the gym. Notably private, when she popped up in public, she seemed perfectly content, Irons almost always at her side.Now is the perfect time to take stock of her legacy. On the court, there were few like her.She could score at will, rebound, pass, play defense and lead her team like a coach on the floor. She moved at her own pace, faster than the others or slower, depending on the moment. Either way, No. 23 seemed always to be in perfect time, and the results back that up.Two N.C.A.A. titles starring for UConn. Two Olympic golds for the U.S. National Team. Four W.N.B.A. championships leading the Minnesota Lynx. Plenty of winning in international leagues and plenty of M.V.P. awards.Moore’s Hall of Fame-caliber career includes two N.C.A.A. titles with UConn.Suzy Allman for The New York TimesOff the court, well, she was even more extraordinary. Walk away from a Hall of Fame-caliber career before turning 30 — who does that?Step out of the bright lights to take on what seemed like an impossible task — gaining liberty for an inmate held in a maximum-security prison — who does that?Maya Moore, the one and only.I followed her for weeks in 2019 as she worked to free Irons. There were interviews in restaurants and her church, in her Atlanta townhome, as we drove to visit an Atlanta shelter for struggling families and down No More Victims Road in the middle of Missouri to visit Irons in prison. What struck me most about Moore were her heart and mind.At times, I admit, I found her a little frustrating. She seemed to answer questions only after pausing, slowing down and considering how she could be perceived. It took a while to understand that Moore’s way of responding to a reporter reflected the careful way she did everything else. She mulls and ponders, mulls and ponders. Then she tells you she is mulling and pondering.She would almost always deliver, speaking earnestly of her faith, philosophizing about the price of fame, how society is changing for better or worse, and the history of injustice toward Black people in the criminal justice system and beyond.Raised by a single mother and a phalanx of extended family, she was taught since childhood to walk tall in the world while also standing apart from it. She was never going to follow the crowd. She was going to lead.There’s a tendency to think of Colin Kaepernick as the first prominent professional athlete to protest racial injustice during the fraught last decade. But before Kaepernick, Moore was helping lead her Lynx teammates in calls for change in the summer of 2016. The team wore black T-shirts over their jerseys. On the front were the phrases “Change Starts With Us. Justice and Accountability.” On the back, “Black Lives Matter,” along with the names Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two Black men shot to death by police that summer, and the Dallas police shield, honoring five officers fatally shot by a gunman who disrupted a peaceful protest of police brutality.Moore faced a backlash, but she was undeterred. “I’d found my voice,” she said.Moore taught a Black History Month workshop focused on teamwork, leadership and social justice to middle school students in 2019.Nina Robinson for The New York TimesHer willingness to be outspoken made perfect sense. It sprang from her faith. And from her connection with Irons, whom she had known since she was a teenager.In the early years of Irons’s imprisonment, Moore’s great-uncle and godparents, deeply involved in prison ministry, took him under their wings and treated him like family. Eventually, the relationship between Maya and Jonathan would morph from something they described as siblinglike to something far more profound. She kept it quiet from almost everyone in her sphere, worried the attention would distract from the quest for Irons’s freedom, but she fell in love with him while he was still incarcerated.Through him, she knew well the price of injustice.What’s next for Moore? I can’t say for sure, other than that I expect her to keep pushing for reform of the criminal justice system in her way, behind the scenes as often as in the public eye. She has most likely earned enough from playing and endorsements to be financially secure. (She hardly lives lavishly. When I checked in with her a while back, she spoke with joy of showing Irons Atlanta by driving around the city in her 2006 Honda Civic.)She and Irons now have a son, Jonathan Jr., born early last year. She has said in interviews that they hope to grow their family.“I’m stepping away to live a less famous life,” she told me once. “A life where I am less visible than in my life as an athlete. Stepping away so I can do things that hopefully can be of service to the world in ways that might not be seen until they get done.”That was four years ago. It was true then and true now. More

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      N.C.A.A. Tournament: South Carolina Is Locked at No. 1 Ahead of Shuffling

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      The Gamecocks have only one loss, but parity across the Power 5 leagues, especially the Big Ten and Big 12, should make for intense jockeying ahead of the tournament.As the spring approaches, women’s college basketball is inching closer and closer to a symbolic milestone. It’s one many people might never have noticed, and one that won’t have any impact on the quality or intensity of games.But for the first time since its debut 40 years ago, the N.C.A.A. Division I women’s basketball tournament will be officially called “March Madness” — the popular term that, until last fall, the N.C.A.A. had technically reserved exclusively for the men’s tournament.The start of the first official women’s March Madness is just a few weeks away. Many of the teams at the top of the heap are familiar, yet plenty of questions remain.Can anyone — besides Missouri, which managed to hand South Carolina a loss, by a single point — challenge the Gamecocks? Will Connecticut, long the front-runner, emerge in the postseason after its worst regular season in recent memory? Will the reigning champions, Stanford, earn longtime coach Tara VanDerveer her first repeat?As the regular season draws to a close, here’s what we know — and what’s next.Aliyah Boston is the front-runner for player of the year.Aliyah Boston has recorded 20 consecutive double-doubles, breaking a Southeastern Conference record set by Sylvia Fowles.Tracy Glantz/The State, via Associated PressSouth Carolina has been the top-ranked team in The Associated Press poll since the preseason thanks in large part to the efforts of the 6-foot-5 junior forward Aliyah Boston. Despite being the focus of every opposing team’s defense and getting persistently double-teamed by their most physical players as she fights to get in the paint, Boston has been nearly unstoppable. She leads the nation in win shares, according to Her Hoop Stats, and has recorded a double-double in points and rebounds in 20 consecutive games, breaking a Southeastern Conference record set by the highly decorated W.N.B.A. star Sylvia Fowles at Louisiana State.A top recruit out of high school, Boston has been a contender for national honors since she was a freshman. Last year, though, her stellar sophomore season was overshadowed by the prolific scoring and preternatural talent of Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, whose national player of the year awards as a freshman were unprecedented.This year, Iowa guard Caitlin Clark, who in January became the first Division I player to record back-to-back 30-point triple-doubles, has drawn some attention away from Boston’s dominance — and that of her own team. Clark’s gaudy point totals and splashy hot streaks — she’s hit at least four 3-pointers seven times this season — make for irresistible highlight reels and have sparked conversation about her place in the player of the year race.Boston, though, has the numbers with 16.7 points and 11.8 rebounds per game, and South Carolina (26-1, 14-1 Southeastern Conference) has the wins.“It’s hard for me to imagine not having her and her contributions in so many different areas outside of the stat sheet,” South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley told reporters last week. “She’s a communicator, she’s a captain, she’s a leader, she’s a great teammate, she’s a great competitor on top of the stats.”Some top seeds could have a particularly tough road to the Final Four.With Paige Bueckers, second from left, set to return from an injury, UConn could have a more complete team and a quasi-home-court advantage during the N.C.A.A. tournament. Jessica Hill/Associated PressBarring a massive upset loss in the SEC tournament, the Gamecocks appear to be firmly in control of the top overall seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament. They’re better poised than ever to win Staley’s second national championship, with the South Carolina faithful — who have posted Division I’s best home attendance since 2015 — ready to pack the stands should they end up in the Greensboro, N.C., region.The most recent top-16 reveal from the N.C.A.A. Division I Women’s Basketball Committee, on Feb. 10, projected that the rest of the No. 1 line would fill out with familiar faces. After losing to South Carolina in December, Stanford (23-3, 14-0 Pac-12 Conference) has cruised through conference play with relative ease — only Arizona, its championship game foe last season, and Oregon stand as other Pac-12 teams ranked in The Associated Press poll.The Cardinal are currently projected as the No. 2 overall seed. That would likely place them in the Spokane, Wash., region, close to home and with limited upset potential.With the third and fourth overall seeds, the action is concentrated in the Atlantic Coast Conference. North Carolina State (25-3, 16-1) and Louisville, who have both been top seeds in recent tournaments, are neck and neck. The third-ranked Wolfpack are holding onto a narrow edge over the fourth-ranked Cardinals (24-3, 15-2) in the conference. One will likely play in the Wichita, Kan., regional, and one in the Bridgeport, Conn., regional.What both of those teams are hoping to avoid is something of a perfect storm brewing in Bridgeport. If UConn, projected as a No. 3 seed, is assigned to Bridgeport, either North Carolina State or Louisville — which has already beaten the Huskies once this year — could face what will essentially be a fervent home crowd at a purportedly neutral site.But even if UConn (20-5, 14-1 Big East Conference) winds up in Wichita, it will likely be playing with its healthiest team since the start of the season. Bueckers, who was sidelined after suffering a tibial plateau fracture and a lateral meniscus tear in her left knee on Dec. 5, is expected to return to the court on Friday against St. John’s.The Big 12 and Big Ten are deeper than ever.Caitlin Clark, left, had 32 points in a win over Rutgers on Thursday. Clark has gotten some national player of the year consideration along with Boston. Greg Fiume/Getty ImagesThis season’s parity has been remarkable, especially across the Power 5 conferences, where upsets have kept even the top teams from going on cruise control. Nowhere has that been more apparent than in the Big Ten and the Big 12, which are crowding the national rankings and positioned for exciting conference tournaments.In the Big Ten, where Maryland has won five of the past seven tournaments, the top teams — No. 6 Michigan, No. 17 Ohio State, No. 21 Iowa, and No. 13 Maryland — are separated by just a win or two, and their position is still changing by the day. Seven of the league’s teams are projected by ESPN to make the N.C.A.A. tournament, a group that now includes Northwestern, which fought to a double-overtime win over Michigan this month.In the Big 12, Baylor’s grip on the conference has been even tighter: The Bears have won nine of the past 10 tournaments. Yet right now, the fifth-ranked Bears (22-5, 12-3) are fighting for the top spot with No. 9 Iowa State.Close at their heels are No. 20 Oklahoma, which is second in the country in points per game with 84.9; No. 11 Texas, which managed one of the N.C.A.A. tournament’s biggest upsets last year by knocking off Maryland in the round of 16; and Kansas, which is in the mix despite landing 10th in the conference’s preseason poll.The last week of the regular season will be a tightly contested window into March.Louisville’s Hailey Van Lith, left, scored 13 points in a win Thursday against Pittsburgh. Van Lith leads the fourth-ranked Cardinals in scoring.Rebecca Droke/Associated PressThe final matchups of the regular season should offer some intrigue as teams jockey for seeding in conference tournaments and the national tournament.On Friday night, an overperforming No. 10 Indiana (19-6, 11-4) faces an underperforming Maryland at home (8 p.m. Eastern time, Big Ten Network).The Hoosiers beat Maryland in January, and now are just one win behind the Terrapins in a crowded field at the top of the Big Ten. If Maryland wins, there’s a chance it’ll be able to eke out its fourth-straight regular-season conference title and the top seed in the Big Ten tournament; if it loses, it’ll fall to the middle of the pack.On Sunday, Louisville and North Carolina State will each close the regular season against ranked opponents whom they have already beaten. The Cardinals will face No. 14 Notre Dame (noon, ESPN2), and the Wolfpack will take on No. 23 Virginia Tech (6 p.m., ACC Network). An upset loss for either team could take them out of the top four overall seeds and create a steeper road toward the A.C.C. title.In the Southeastern Conference, South Carolina’s stranglehold on the top spot has quieted some of its usual competitors. But new-look Louisiana State has sneaked into the top 10 for the first time in 13 years with Kim Mulkey at the helm, and is looking to make a run in the N.C.A.A. tournament despite not having qualified since 2018.On Sunday, the eighth-ranked Tigers will play No. 16 Tennessee (2 p.m., ESPN2), a team that started strong but has been bullied recently, losing four of six — albeit to a difficult group of opponents that included Connecticut and South Carolina — before winning Thursday.Mulkey’s former team, Baylor, is hardly languishing in her absence, though. The Bears will play Iowa State on Monday (7 p.m., ESPN2), with NaLyssa Smith, one of the best players in the country, center stage as she tries to pull the Bears atop the Big 12. More

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      No. 1 South Carolina Gets a Statement Win Over No. 2 UConn

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      The Gamecocks dominated in the second half and gained only the second win in 11 games against Connecticut in the history of the two programs.In a matchup of the two highest-ranked teams in women’s basketball, the University of South Carolina overwhelmed the University of Connecticut in the fourth quarter for a 73-57 victory on Monday in the final of the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas.This was the first time a women’s competition had been part of the prestigious tournament, which has existed since 2011 for men.The decisive victory gave South Carolina a 2-9 record against UConn in the history of the programs, and it should preserve the Gamecocks’ No. 1 ranking in The Associated Press Top 25 poll. To accommodate the high-profile matchup, the A.P. delayed its weekly poll update for just the second time ever.The rout also offers clues about how these two teams might fare later in the season, both during their next regular season game against each other — in Columbia, S.C., on Jan. 27 — and through the deep postseason runs both teams are expected to make toward the Final Four.Despite remarkable performances from the teams’ stars, the story of the game lay in its fundamentals: turnovers and offensive rebounds.The Huskies (3-1) went into halftime with a 3-point lead but could not generate any points from turnovers or offensive rebounds during the second half. The Gamecocks (6-0) forced 19 turnovers, capitalizing on them for 21 points.“We just took the shots they gave us,” South Carolina Coach Dawn Staley said on ESPN after the game.UConn’s sloppiness, uncharacteristic of the long-dominant program, is something that the team, particularly its young core, will have to work on.“We’ve got a long time before we go down there and play them again,” Connecticut Coach Geno Auriemma told reporters after the game. “But right now, they’re better than us. We’re going to have to work really, really hard.”The Gamecocks, in contrast, played sharp and turned to their signature defense in the second half, allowing Connecticut to score just 3 points in the fourth quarter against tight man-to-man coverage.The junior forward Aliyah Boston nearly had a double-double in the first half, and ended the game with 22 points and 15 rebounds — the kind of performance that South Carolina is relying on her to deliver throughout the season.“It’s time for Aliyah Boston to be the dominant player she is,” Staley said.The guards Zia Cooke and Destanni Henderson are the other two keys to the South Carolina offense. Cooke had 17 points worth of circus shots, while Henderson’s veteran savvy manifested in speedy transition baskets and a well-balanced stat line of 15 points, 4 rebounds, 6 assists and 6 steals.Overall, the team showed its depth — and that it has ample room to grow. If, for example, the Gamecocks can get Kamilla Cardoso, a 6-foot-7 transfer from Syracuse, more involved in the paint, they might have an easy answer for a tough interior defense like Connecticut’s.This was the first big test of the season for the Huskies. UConn guard Paige Bueckers, the team’s leading scorer, delivered a number of showstopping baskets, and in the first half the Huskies’ ball movement looked nearly transcendent. That rhythm, though, disintegrated in the second half, when only Bueckers had more than one field goal.Connecticut will have plenty of shooters ready to help, though, once it reduces some of its more basic mistakes. The redshirt senior guard Evina Westbrook was the spark for the Connecticut offense early, and the team’s second leading scorer. With more opportunities, she might be able to lift some of the offensive load off Bueckers.Azzi Fudd, a highly regarded freshman, barely played Monday after scoring 18 points against the University of South Florida on Sunday, a decision Auriemma attributed to her inability to move within South Carolina’s stifling defense. With more time in college basketball’s big leagues, though, Fudd might become a consistent scoring threat.Connecticut needs to fix its flaws in the coming months if it wants to establish the kind of dominance that for more than decades has made it the foremost team in women’s college basketball.In Monday’s win, the Gamecocks didn’t reveal such shortcomings. The adjustments they needed could be handled during the game and not left for a future practice.The road to the Final Four won’t be easy for any team in the sport. But with this statement victory, South Carolina suggested that is firmly on course. More

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      After Helping Her Husband Gain Freedom, Maya Moore Savors Her Own

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      Moore, the 2014 W.N.B.A. M.V.P., is reveling in married life and continuing a fight for criminal justice reform alongside Jonathan Irons, whom she married after helping him win his release from prison after 23 years.When you speak with Maya Moore and her husband, Jonathan Irons, a single word comes up with drumbeat constancy.Freedom.“It’s everything to us,” Moore said during an interview last week.She wasn’t talking just about the fact that Irons is out of prison after serving 23 years for a crime he always insisted he did not commit. She was talking about how, after struggling to overturn his conviction, she has more time and energy to fight for criminal justice reform.“There is life we want to live, things we want to do, things we feel called to do together to help make our world a better place,” she said. “This sense of freedom is huge for both of us now.”Here’s the shorthand version of their journey — part love story, part against-the-odds battle to right a terrible wrong. Still in the prime of a brilliant career, Moore left the Minnesota Lynx, the W.N.B.A. team she helped lead to four championships, before the 2019 season. Burned out, she wanted to focus her energy on helping Irons.Irons was Inmate No. 101145 at a maximum-security prison in Missouri. He had been locked up since his teens, when he was sentenced in 1998 to 50 years for a robbery and assault that he denied committing.After getting to know him through a prison ministry, Moore and her family believed in Irons’s innocence. They investigated his case on their own, hired lawyers to help and stood behind his last-ditch appeal. In March 2020, a Missouri judge vacated the convictions, citing evidence that was “weak and circumstantial at best” and flaws in how the case was investigated and tried.Prosecutors fought the decision, but three months later, Irons walked out of prison with Moore and her family there to whisk him away. A day later, at a hotel near the prison, he proposed. Weeks later, they married.“It’s a miracle that we’re sitting here together,” Moore said as she and Irons spoke to me over a video call. “I mean, there’s no glass between Jonathan and me, no chains, no security guards walking around. A miracle.”They were inside their suburban Atlanta home, discussing their life together and her future in basketball. I had a question, the one asked most often by people who have followed their story.I detailed Moore’s quest for justice in a series of articles. I interviewed Irons in a bare-walled prison conference room and spent days with Moore. Throughout that time, they described their relationship as a nearly familial bond.So why didn’t they admit there was more to the connection?“It would have been too much to navigate telling a love story on top of Jonathan’s fight for freedom,” Moore said.She is exceedingly careful in all she does. She answers questions with a measured cadence that lets you know she’s considering the weight of every word. She has rarely opened up her private life to the world.“We felt like it was best to wait before we talked about that part of our story,” Moore said. “He was in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The urgency of Jonathan’s fight took precedence over everything else.”Life since Irons’s release has been full of emotion, exploration and discovery.Moore, center, celebrating as Irons greeted family and friends after his release from prison in July 2020.Julia Hansen for The New York TimesThere was much to learn — about each other, about a life full of freedom. You have to remember, he said, “our relationship had consisted of phone calls, letters and prison visits.” He noted that he and Moore could barely hug during those visits, which were rare and held in a large, heavily guarded room full of other inmates and their loved ones.Irons, now 41, grew up in stifling poverty. He had never ventured far from the St. Louis area, where he was born. Now he is married to a globally renowned basketball star and living with her in a recently purchased home. Everything is new. How do you use an A.T.M.? Where do you go to buy clothes? What’s it like to have a driver’s license or fly on a plane?He has been dogged by internal agony, the result of being stuck for years inside a prison that could turn violent in a second. He has endured sleepless nights, tossing and turning, his mind working to cope with the past. He has struggled to relax around people he doesn’t know.“The trauma is very real,” Moore explained. Her goal is no longer winning championships. It’s being present emotionally, physically and spiritually, “to help my husband through that pain.”In January, Moore lost her 84-year-old great-uncle, Hugh Flowers, after a long illness. It was Flowers who, while teaching music to inmates at the Jefferson City prison, first took Irons’s claims of innocence seriously. Without Flowers prodding other family members to get to know Irons and start investigating, Irons might still be in prison.Moore and Irons remember the tears they shed as they held each other tight after hearing that Flowers had died.Life, though, has also been stuffed with joy. Their faces lit up as they spoke of simple pleasures. Playing Frisbee. Hiking. Exploring Atlanta in Moore’s 2006 Honda Civic. Flying to the West Coast, where Irons saw a desert for the first time and they kayaked in Santa Barbara.Another highlight: Watching the Connecticut women’s basketball team, which Moore led to national titles in 2009 and 2010, play in this year’s N.C.A.A. tournament.“Oh man, she’s into it!” Irons said. “She’s up there shouting, calling the players by their nicknames!”Moore leaned toward him, a look of embarrassment spreading across her face. “Nobody needs to know that!”They laughed.As we spoke, I could see their closeness. Sometimes he rested his head on her shoulder. Sometimes she touched his arm, light and reassuring.“I still can’t believe I get to spend time with him every day,” she said.“And I get to kiss her 100 times a day,” he added.What about the future?They plan to use storytelling to inspire change. Podcasts, speeches, films. Anything to “shine a light on injustice,” Moore said, starting with their own story. An ESPN documentary will feature their battle for Irons’s release and their life together.They want children. When? Moore, a Christian, says she will leave that up to God.What about basketball? Moore is 31. Though her game these days is limited to occasional driveway shootarounds with friends, she could return to the W.N.B.A. and play for years. But she won’t commit to that. Not now.“The first year of marriage requires a lot,” she said. “It’s a whole big thing. I know right now my priorities are where they need to be. I’m in a place where I can actually enjoy life and my husband’s freedom without the burden of being in a fight for his freedom.” More

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      Women’s Basketball Makes Room for New Stars, and New Contenders

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.C.A.A. Basketball TournamentsMen’s PreviewWomen’s PreviewAn Unusual BracketLatest Virus CasesDuke Ends SeasonAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWomen’s Basketball Makes Room for New Stars, and New ContendersThe usual elites are still great, but the rest of the college field has a real shot to win the championship this year. Star power isn’t concentrated at the top anymore.The UConn Huskies celebrating after winning the women’s Big East tournament.Credit…David Butler Ii/USA Today Sports, via ReutersMarch 14, 2021, 12:01 a.m. ETThere are few more compelling diversions than N.C.A.A. tournament basketball, and after the postseason was canceled last March because of the coronavirus pandemic, plenty of the best players in women’s basketball are hungry for the bright lights of the big stage. Their passion for the game will, at least for the next few weeks, become our own as we become immersed in the bracket’s glories and heartbreaks.Before the tournament begins in San Antonio on March 21, here are a few keys to understanding the past season in women’s college basketball.The full scope of the coronavirus pandemic’s impact is unknown — but huge.A worker sanitized the George Mason gym before a game in January.Credit…Patrick Smith/Getty ImagesIt’s impossible to overstate how much the women’s college basketball season has been defined by the pandemic. At least nine games have been canceled this month because of coronavirus health and safety protocols. Nearly every top program has missed games because of either contact tracing or positive virus tests, meaning most teams have not played a full slate of games.In December, The New York Times reported that there had been at least 6,629 cases of the coronavirus within college sports; it’s hard to know how many more athletes and staff members have tested positive since, because the N.C.A.A. doesn’t track testing results. But at least one women’s basketball player, Vanderbilt’s Demi Washington, learned that she had acute myocarditis, which doctors believed was a side effect of the coronavirus.Blue-chip programs still rule, but more of the others at last have a real shot at the title.Stanford players celebrated in confetti last week after they won the Pac-12 Conference tournament championship game. Credit…Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports, via ReutersSix of the top 10 teams in The Associated Press poll have won at least one title; only two have never been to a Final Four. But the high rankings of perennial contenders like Stanford, Baylor, Louisville and, yes, UConn obscure the fact that there’s a much more level playing field at the top of the game than there has been in years, as evidenced by the split votes for the No. 1 spot. (UConn has the top ranking with 22 first-place votes, Stanford is in second place with five, and North Carolina State in third with two.)UConn is the only team in the top 25 with just one loss, but the Huskies played a relatively easy schedule. Among their peers at the top, there is no clear front-runner, which sets the stage for tight Elite Eight matchups.The SEC tournament showed us what madness might be in store.Kentucky and Georgia faced off in the SEC Tournament, with Georgia emerging victorious.Credit…Dawson Powers/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe pandemic has changed the way conference tournaments and the N.C.A.A. tournament are seeded. Because the teams in each conference haven’t played the same number of games, most tournaments have been ranked using win percentage. At the SEC tournament, for example, Tennessee was the No. 3 seed and Kentucky was No. 5, even though Kentucky won as many conference games as the Lady Vols and had more wins over all. The result of this seeding system was enticing matchups for two strong upset candidates — No. 11 Ole Miss, which came tantalizingly close to beating Tennessee in the quarterfinals, and No. 4 Georgia, which battled to a 5-point loss against South Carolina in the championship game.Similar unpredictability may be on the way at the N.C.A.A. tournament, which will be using a true S-curve to seed teams for the first time: Because the games are all taking place in San Antonio, geographic considerations won’t be taken into account as the selection committee creates the bracket, removing one variable and potentially creating stronger competition.The 3-point revolution is steering many potential underdogs.Aisha Sheppard, Virginia Tech’s 3-point specialist, in a game against George Washington this season.Credit…Pool photo by Matt GentryDuring the 2020-21 season, more teams than ever averaged at least eight 3-point baskets made per game, according to data from Her Hoop Stats. The 3-point revolution has clearly made it to the women’s game, and has created a path for mid-major programs either to have their first shot at making the tournament, like the High Point Panthers (10.2 per game), or to fuel genuine upset potential, as is the case with Florida Gulf Coast (11.8 per game) and Stephen F. Austin (8.6 per game). Power 5 schools are no stranger to splash, either — Virginia Tech is averaging 9.8 per game, thanks in large part to the sharpshooting senior guard Aisha Sheppard (3.7 per game), and Arkansas is averaging 9.6. Any one of these teams could easily live (or die) by the 3.There are stars all over the place.Natasha Mack, a top W.N.B.A. prospect, in a game against Baylor earlier this season.Credit…Sue Ogrocki/Associated PressBeyond the top teams, women’s college basketball used to have a talent vacuum, with the best high school recruits drawn to extending the reigns of dynasties instead of aiming to lead deep postseason runs with programs accustomed to watching the Final Four from home. No longer, though: Charli Collier of Texas and Oklahoma State’s Natasha Mack, who are top W.N.B.A. prospects, represent the Big 12. The best shooter in the country is Monika Czinano, a junior center at Iowa. It’s hard to turn on a women’s college basketball game without seeing at least one truly compelling player capable of willing a team to victory — and bringing some madness to March.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Dee Rowe, UConn Basketball Coach and Fund-Raiser, Dies at 91

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesA Future With CoronavirusVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storythose we’ve lostDee Rowe, UConn Basketball Coach and Fund-Raiser, Dies at 91He coached the Huskies for eight seasons, taking them to the N.C.A.A. tournament, before spending decades raising money for campus athletic facilities.Dee Rowe being honored in 2019 at the Gampel Pavilion on the University of Connecticut campus. He raised $7 million in donations to build the arena.Credit…Hartford CourantJan. 12, 2021, 4:58 p.m. ETDee Rowe, a revered figure at the University of Connecticut for a half-century as the men’s basketball coach and athletics department fund-raiser, died on Sunday at his home in Storrs, Conn. He was 91.His son, Donald, said that the cause was Covid-19, but that he had also received a diagnosis of Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.Rowe (his given name was Donald, but he got the nickname Dee in childhood, and it stuck) coached the Huskies for eight seasons, compiling a 120-88 record as he guided the team twice to the National Invitational Tournament and once to the N.C.A.A. men’s tournament, in 1976.After defeating Hofstra in the first round of that tournament, Connecticut lost, 93-79, to Rutgers. “We lost because of the way Rutgers makes you play,” he said after the game. “ We just let them play too fast for us. A team like that, that plays that fast, they ultimately wear you down.”Following the 1976-77 season, when he led the Huskies to a 17-10 record, he retired because of pancreatitis. “I got to the point in coaching where I felt I was the lone matador,” he told The Hartford Courant in 2004. “I suffered too much. I got out at 48. I was burned out.”Rowe embraced Coach Dave Gavitt of Providence College in 1976 after Connecticut defeated the Friars in a New England conference championship game that sent the Huskies to the N.C.A.A. tournament. Credit…Hartford CourantWithin a year, he started as the athletics department’s fund-raiser. “He had been offered the athletics director job at Middlebury, and along the way he pursued others, but he was committed to UConn,” his son said in a phone interview. “He wanted to be around it. He was very passionate and was a great salesman. At UConn, he sold from the heart.”In his 13 years as fund-raiser, an official role, Rowe was best known for collecting about $7 million in private donations to build the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion, the Storrs campus arena. Named after the lead donor, a real estate developer and alumnus, the pavilion is home to the men’s and women’s basketball team and the women’s volleyball team.After retiring in 1991 he remained a special adviser and helped raise money to build the Werth Family UConn Basketball Champions Center, where the basketball teams practice.The Coronavirus Outbreak More